1. Field of Invention
The present invention is directed to a method and system of increasing the effective bandwidth of Internet Protocol (IP) communication links.
2. Description of the Background
The use of data networks, and in particular IP networks, to transmit voice conversation has been discussed in a several patents and publications including U.S. Pat. No. 4,771,425 to Baran et al. and Request for Comments (RFC 1789) entitled xe2x80x9cInet Phone: Telephone Services and Servers on Internetxe2x80x9d dated April 1995. The contents of both those references are incorporated herein by reference. One advantage of transmitting voice over data networks is the elimination of the expensive TDM (time division multiplexing) switching equipment needed for traditional circuit switched handling of voice. A network of IP routers replaces the traditional switch and forwards the voice packets from the source to the destination.
A benefit of using network routing to guide the voice packets is the ability to automatically take the shortest route between the origination and destination points, as determined dynamically by the network routing protocols. An additional benefit is the automatic re-routing of traffic due to link failures, provided that an alternate paths exist. The benefits of data networks carrying voice, however, derive from the fact that addressing information is carried in every packet sent over the network.
As shown in FIG. 1, the standard Internet UDP protocol takes 28 bytes of header information (i.e., 20 bytes of IP header (inter-network addressing) and 8 bytes of UDP (protocol identification and packet information)), for each packet of data. (Additional details of IP-based communications can be found in Internetworking with TCP/IP, Vols. 1-3, by Comer and Stevens, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference). Moreover, voice packets sent via IP carry relatively small payloads of data to reduce latency. Therefore, the overhead used by the UDP/IP header is a large percentage of the traffic over any given network link. This reduces the number of voice packets per time that can be sent over a link compared to a hypothetical protocol with a smaller header.
Modifications in routing IP-based packets have been proposed in the context of adding information to individual packets to enlarge those packets to provide additional services, such as mobility in a wireless system. One such modification called xe2x80x9cIP-within-IPxe2x80x9d (IPIP) was proposed by Ioannidis et al. in xe2x80x9cIP-based Protocols for Mobile Internetworking,xe2x80x9d SIGCOMM ""91 Conference Proceedings on Communications Architectures and Protocols, published as Computer Communication Review, Vol. 21, Number 4, September 1991, pages 235-245, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
It is an object of the present invention to address the inefficient use of bandwidth resulting from communication protocol headers in the transmission of packets over a common communications channel.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a more efficient UDP/IP header structure for transmitting packets over a common IP link.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a more efficient UDP/IP header structure for transmitting voice and/or data packets over a common IP link.
These and other objects of the present invention are achieved by a first multiplexer which repackages plural packets into a SuperPacket in order to reduce the percentage of a packet that is dedicated to header information. After transmitting a SuperPacket from the first multiplexer to a second multiplexer, the second multiplexer splits the SuperPacket back into substantially its original sub-components with their original formats.